Natalia is no mindless killer. But her superiors seem to think she's emotionless and detached, that she is completely unfazed with murdering a target's family, having an aim on a little child on a playground.
It's complicated when the job is done. She gets mixed feelings about it. She can't sleep at night. She thinks she sees ghosts in the shadows.
She isn't sure if it's a normal thing for an assassin. But she's learned to deal with it.
No one reads through her. She has a hardened cold mask up front, people believe that she is incapable of emotion. She wants them to think that way, make them believe in a nonexistent side she is showing them. But feelings are distractions, little things like that will make you trip over and sabotage everything. An emotion is like a fly. She feels it, but she can ignore it before it starts to spread and she has to refrain herself from acting on it. It's hard not to snap at times. But she's gone through so much painful training that she handles it with ease.
The Black Widow title has gotten her so far that she has not an ounce of patience for feelings. She does what she has to.
But all the training programming in the world, and her emotionless stoic act, cannot save her from meeting one evil demigod who will change absolutely everything.
A nightmare awaiting in the future.
The short stay in the cabin house has already started as a misery. All cities of Russia are less colder than it's forests, that's a logical fact.
Making a fire with wounded hands is frustrating enough.
She already wants to jump herself in the fire. Is that enough of an explanation of how freezing it is?
This is the worst safehouse coming from the KGB. She rolls her eyes for the sixth time, giving up from trying to get her hands warm from the small warmth the fire gives.
She'll be leaving tomorrow anyhow. Her mission is completed, all she needs now is rest. But when she gets back to her apartment in Moscow, she will have herself in a hot bath. Not a warm bath. A hot bath. A very steaming hot bath. The thought of lava has her already curling her toes in need of heat.
As a Siberian-born child, it is surprising to watch herself writhe under the terrible merciless temperature of this forest. She wasn't ready to tolerate this kind of cold, honestly speaking.
It worsens as time passes and the sky darkens, the fire still cracking but the warmth dissipates.
She stops going through her weapons duffle bag and watches the small fire with her arms crossed. Weighing on the options of going outside to collect some wood or wake up tomorrow morning with her body frosted with ice.
She sighs.
Collect some wood it is.
Out into the cold.
She grabs another jacket after putting her GLOCK gun into her thigh holster before she pulls the door open.
She winces when the cold howling wind hits her and she walks down the porch rigidly, slamming the door close.
She doesn't shiver or clatter her teeth together. Her face is stony as she walks rigid and fast, heading to the small storage room in a short distant where she found countless of chopped wood. She did take many, but they were too frosted to make a fire with. Even as she did succeed on making a fire, it still wasn't strong enough. And that's why she's here outside again.
The damn cold.
"Der'mo." She grumbles, her face feeling numb. She stops abruptly when she hears something snap, her hand hovering over her GLOCK but she's motionless. Her eyes slightly widen in alert. She narrows her eyes before she turns around, gun already in hand, only to have it pointed at nothing. She grounds her teeth and makes an unsatisfied grumble, her sharp eyes snapping every direction. She feels something wrong. She knows something is wrong.
No.
What she feels is a presence.
Another snap.
She swiftly turns, gun in hand, and takes a different direction, her heart pumping faster in anticipation.
If she is going to have to fight someone in the cold, it would be quite gritty and slower and heavier than normal. Considering how rigid her limps feel and the numbing cold.
Her breath puffs into the cold air and she watches it blow away along with the wind momentarily, as she walks very slowly and quietly, gun carefully raised in her hand.
She inhales and exhales smoothly, calm and ready for any sort of attack.
But then she comes upon a wounded man instead -- who is attempting to sit up using his elbow, grunting as he tries to lift his upper body before he falls onto his back.
Natalia walks closer, carefully and quietly, her GLOCK gun not lowered. Suspicion and curiosity have taken over her.
The man is dressed in an unusual green golden rich complicated attire. His hair long black as the night, his face as white as the snow beneath him.
Natalia watches him for a moment longer, having stopped a few feet away. She waits for him to notice her with the GLOCK gun still pointed at him.
She gets a feeling that he knows that she's there and she's scrutinizing him suspiciously.
She feels like she should do something, but refrains herself from trying to even go near him.
He'll die from hypothermia if she just stands there. Or maybe he is dying right now.
But this wasn't part of her mission.
No where in the file does it mention that she must nurse a strange man with lanky legs.
Maybe she should just leave him here. He isn't her responsibility.
Her patience is wearing thin.
Her thoughts race around her head and she feels like she is going to go mad if she just stands there. Doing nothing. Like a fool.
Natalia always finds a way.
She must now.
"Yebat' eto." She hisses to herself, holstering her gun back in it's place and decides to aid this stranger.
She kneels down and feels for his pulse.
She sighs in relief to find that there is a pulse, and it is a strong one too. Surprisingly so.
She touches the man's cheek gently and looks at him.
She blinks dismisses the obvious strangely attractiveness of this unconscious man and focuses on trying to wake him up instead. Putting aside the scratches small bruises on his face.
She pats his cheek lightly. "Ser? Zdravstvuyte?" She shakes him lightly, but doesn't get a single reaction. "Vstavay. That way I won't have to carry you." She inwardly rolls her eyes to herself. Like she'd carry a man his size, his upper body would hang off on her if so.
She slaps the man's cheek hard before she sees him stir slightly, and then the slits of his eyes opening slowly. He blinks lightly and stares back at her with a frown on his bruised pale chiseled face. His eyes icy are light blue silver, corresponding well with the weather and his surrounding.
Now Natalia is shivering relentlessly from being outside too long, and she feels numb and dizzy in the head and rigid. She can't breathe, and her eyelids feel heavy, and her heart beats slow down.
Then, she sinks into darkness.